enneagram passions

Enneagram – Type STRENGTHS (Part 3)

dmtorbi 12-step, ACoAs, al-anon, Alcoholics Anonymous, alcoholism, mental health, Psychotherapy, recovery, self growth, self-help , , , , , , , ,

enn water over rocks AS WATER FLOWS OVER ROCKS
so do my Gifts from out of me

PREVIOUS: STRENGTHS (#2)

SITE: Popular Enneagram books

REMINDER:  In this context – EGO = FALSE SELF,  NOT the same as a HEALTHY EGO, and read “EGO”)

OVERVIEW – Fall from Higher Essence Qualities to Ego Distortions
Oscar Ichazo made a connection between the 10 spheres of Kabbala’s Tree of Life, & the Enneagram symbol. The Tree’s first sphere, Keter, is reserved for the Messiah, leaving 9 others for humans, suggesting 9 kinds of souls as emanations or facets of the Divine Unity.  (MORE...)
● While everyone has the capacity to embody all of the Holy Ideas and Virtues, one pair of them is central to the soul’s identity, so their loss is felt acutely, & the person’s ego (conscious False Self) become totally preoccupied with recreating it, although in futile, self-defeating ways

● Based part on this, Ichazo created a hierarchy of expressions:
9 HOLY IDEAS (Part 1) the objective, experiential understanding of higher Truth. Their loss or absence generates specific delusions /fixations, the underlying Toxic Rules of our ego-driven lives. Each delusion forms the center of a psychological complex, which the core of that particular fixation.

VIRTUES
Based on the Holy Ideas, the Virtues are the natural expression of the awakened heart – the unified, expansive qualities humans experience when we are abiding in Essence, our True Self. AND they can not be ‘practiced’ or claimed as personal achievements. While our ego-self is most preoccupied with recreating it, doing so would only be a narcissistic self-aggrandizement for the ego – the very opposite of a Virtuous state.
They are each type’s antidote to its Passion – pointing to our STRENGTHS – so as we “Let-go-&-let-God”, accepting what is already waiting in us to emerge, our specific Virtue begins to express itself in our daily life. They are not simply ‘their own reward’ but expressions of Grace & a method of transformation*.

*Transformation can be understood as a conversion of energy: shifting from the narrowness & futility of our Vice to our Virtue. It is not easy to do, since out Type is hardwired & a life-time of doing things a certain way are hard to soften & dissolve. Shifting this energy takes time, along with great desire & determination, persistent effort & a willingness to look deep inside ourselves. Repetition of new habits & patterns create new neural pathways that, over time, allow us to catch our automatic responses before they get going. This makes it possible to choose a new way of responding to PPT (people-places-things).

EGO-FIXATIONS
As a person loses Awareness & Presence of the Holy Idea, we fall away from Essence into the trance of the outer personality – an ego delusion about self or reality. But once the True Nature is restored  we can see through the particular delusions of our type. Again, our underlying Truth is antidote to the ego-fixation when we want to restore the balance & freedom of our personal Holy Idea

PASSIONS

They represent the underlying characteristic emotional response (Basic Fear column) to reality which was created by the loss of contact with our Essential nature – the Virtue. The underlying hurt, shame & grief this loss entails are enormous, so our ego (defended Self) is compelled to come up with its particular way of emotionally coping with the loss, altho misguided & ineffective.
— It can also be thought of as our untamed animal nature before it’s transformed by contact from higher influences—an awareness and Grace. Together with the ego-fixation, these represent the ways that spiritual qualities become contracted into ego states

INSTINCTS
Our Instinctual Self is a primal aspect of personality, & our dominant one insures our fundamental survival in the physical world, but in so doing can block the way to growth. The Enneagram’s 3 instincts are an anchoring counter balance to the higher spiritual Essential Self, rooting us in the dualistic (good-bad) defended self, which ‘forces’ us to distort & habitually overuse our survival strategies.
● They are considered the way we forget our connection to the Divine. Losing our Essence-center distorts our Thinking, Feeling & Doing (TEA). Spiritual / emotional growth comes from being able to balance, release & transform our instinctual nature into its higher opposite.

NOTE that the strengths and weaknesses of each type are two sides of the one coin. There is NO point in wanting to change to another type, since that would just mean swapping one set of problems for another.

NEXT: Type VIRTUES (Part 4a)

Enneagram – Type “DEFECTS” (Part 1)

dmtorbi 12-step, ACoAs, al-anon, Alcoholics Anonymous, alcoholism, mental health, Psychotherapy, recovery, self growth, self-help , , , , ,

enn weaknessI DON’T WANT TO ADMIT TO
my biggest weak spot!

PREVIOUS: Enneagram Basics (#3)

SITES: Enneagram Videos
•“The Enneagram of Individuality”

• ‘Spiritual Desire & Blocks’
• Karen Horney & the Enneagram

‘DEFECTS’ / Defenses:  In trying to identify our own Type, most people will choose the number that makes us look good & reject the one that indicates our Shadow side. However, the ‘normal’ defense of each number is the most direct indicator of our True Number, so it’s best to start with the list of the 9 Grand Passions. Even though we share a portion of all nine qualities with everyone else, determining our type will depend on the main motivation for our behavior, & the Passion gives us that. 

The PASSIONS/VICES are the characteristic defensive styles each Type is born with to cope with life’s stressors. Each VICE/Passion with its accompanying Fixation – the opposite of the 7 Virtues (+ 2) – can also be called character defects, main Emotional Issues, Mental Habits, defensive styles, used here interchangeably.

Our Enneagram Number tells us who we are (Nature),
along with our basic reactive style (Nurture),
shown by how we habitually react (Es) & what we do (As) – especially when stressed. CHART —>

◆ The Passion is the form of self-protection which we automatically gravitate to, based on our fundamental personality – originally a positive way of Being we can call our gift. This gift is a necessary & effective strategy for our survival as children, used to cope specifically with an unhealthy/unsafe upbringing, & in general with the universal difficulties of growing up.

• For most people the Passion gradually becomes a warped version of our Basic Self, exaggerating & twisting the very quality that is supposed to be our cushion & shield.
Instead, prolonged childhood damage turns the gift into a burden. It becomes a chronic internal preoccupation & counter-productive driving force, putting us in a ‘type trance’, with limited & distorted ways of understanding & dealing with reality.
EXP: The Passion of #1 is Perfection, the emotion is Resentment, & the Mental Fixation is Judging.

Enneatype & Fixations
The Enneatype is the tool for human expression free of longing & searching. It can be described as an imaginary membrane between fixation & freedom, the basic energetic pattern of human potential before it becomes perverted.

Fixation is being stuck in a Freudian psycho-sexual stage of development (oral, anal…), as a result of the child feeling ‘not enough’, incomplete, & therefore separate, not connected. This separated self is a physical/mental contraction which tightens up into the Type’s fixation, creating all inauthentic or unnatural behaviors, driven by desperate longing, & a search for the impossible.   (Fixation CHART)

The Passion develops in a 3-stage process:
a. IDEAL: Karen Horney, in Neurosis and Human Growth says that “gradually & unconsciously we create an idealized image of ourselves, which entails self-glorification, & gives us the much-needed feeling of significance & superiority over others.”  This eventually leads to type-specific character defects.
EXP of Types uncomfortable with the Enneagram:
— 4s, the romantics who don’t want to look at the negative side of others
— 7s, the narcissists who never want to see their own negative side

Enn Ideal Slef

b. LIFE STANCE: Our preoccupation with this self-image prevents us from allowing anything to seep into our awareness which would contradict or negate it. According to Horney, if we only look at the world thru ‘idealized glasses’, then our primary concern is not about what we truly feel, but whether or not we are safe.
To feel safe – from being discovered as imperfect – and be able to stay inside the idealized bubble, we develop strategic but artificial ways to cope with life that override & bury our genuine emotions, wishes & thoughts.

Enn Life-Stance
c. UNDER STRESS: In addition to our ‘regular’ in-authentic mode, when we have to deal with stressful situations, especially in the long-term, our fixation gets darker, turning into the negative Passion/Vice. We act out a twisted version of our self-image, adding to our burden. Over-reacting may be a temporary but characteristic flare-up, or the way we usually deal with people-places-things, even when not directly faced with a problem. Either way it separates us from others instead of drawing us closer together – causing more stress!

Enn Under Stress

NEXT: Ennea “Defects” (Part 2)